


and still the sea is salt

by MyLeatherCouch (stereokem), stereokem



Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - Bennett
Genre: Academia, Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Hector does not die, Housman, I just love these guys, Irwin does not get a wheelchair, M/M, Student-Teacher Relationship, Teacher Crush, dirty poetry, oh well, why i insist on writing for a dead fandom is beyond me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3291482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereokem/pseuds/MyLeatherCouch, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereokem/pseuds/stereokem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You called me Dakin during class. Who’s Dakin? Another student?”</p><p>---</p><p>(There were other Dakins.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	and still the sea is salt

**Author's Note:**

> I went dancing the other night and made eyes with a young man that reminded me of SCM. Also, feedback on this fic would be awesome. I thought it was great while I was writing it, but during the editing process I wasn’t so sure. This piece wrote itself.

_Stars, I have seen them fall_  
_But when they drop and die_  
_No star is lost at all_  
_From all the star-sown sky._  
_The toil of all that be_  
_Helps not the primal fault;_  
_It rains into the sea  
_ _And still the sea is salt._

-       AE Housman

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

There were other Dakins.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on why that fact surprised him so. Remaining at Culter’s hadn’t been his brightest idea; but with Hector retired and the last class all in for Oxford and Cambridge, the Headmaster had practically begged him to stay on. He knew, though, that with every successive group of boys that were brought to him, he would always compare them to their predecessors: the first. The Original Oxbridge Eight.

Not to say that any one class totally resembled another; no, all of the boys had their own intrinsic substance. All were modestly individual—like sodding snowflakes, as the cliché would have it. But, as with snowflakes, nature is hard-pressed to present so many re-creations that are all subtly unique without repeating some of the same basic patterns.

So, yes, there were others—other Oxbridge History candidates. Now that he was no longer just a supply teacher, he had other classes as well; but it was always the Oxford and Cambridge group that stood out to him. At the start of each new term they marched into his classroom, a handful of nine or twelve. (Even, once, a group of sixteen, and hadn’t _that_ been an adventure.) They filed in, and Irwin greeted them with his not-yet-impressed friendliness, the expression that would take them through the fire.

           

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

He was the New Hector—sort of. He had taken up Hector’s mantle of much-hailed teacher about whom many of the boys talked, joked, and mused. (These days, he only spared half of a hope that they also respected him.) He had, somehow, inherited Hector’s almost gauche mystery. However, he did not take up the teaching of “General Studies”—that was renamed “Literature Survey” and given to a new master, a thin, slightly eccentric woman with whom Mrs. Lintott was not overly impressed. He also retained his old classroom, much to his relief—not that Hector’s was unsuitable, but . . . well, Irwin certainly didn’t require a _piano_ for his lessons.

He did not adopt a motorbike, and he did not offer any of the boys a lift home. He did not hit them with books, or leer at them in French.

He did, however, quote Auden. And he leaned on them to pay heed to their “Literature Survey” because the poets and play-writes were just as much a part of history as Stalin.

Thus, as he chided and hustled and guided them through each successive term, the Original Oxbridge Eight came slowly out of the woodwork.

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

The first one he noticed was Posner. Easiest to spot, the moony ones, the ones who spent more of lecture time ogling another student (or, occasionally, Irwin himself) than paying attention to the lesson. Then there were the Timms: also very apparent, for their loud, obnoxious nature and penchant for somewhat ribald (read: scatological) humor. Then the Rudges, less interested in intangible history and more so in things they could hold in their hands. There were the brave and somewhat foolhardy Lockwoods, the quiet and secretly empathetic Crowthers; there was even an Akthar or two, with the same quick and exacting intelligence that took an interest in the underrepresented and overlooked. They were all there: some brighter, some duller, some trying for Oxbridge, others finding their fortunes elsewhere. They were all there.

And the Dakins. Yes, there were Dakins.

While the other boys only appeared here and there, a Dakin could be found in every single one of his classes. He didn’t have to wait to spot them, because they made themselves known almost instantly: loud smirks, sly winks, good-natured sneering, and a general attitude of Knows-All-Too-Good-For-This-And-You. And the _Sirs_ —tossed his way more like a line or hypocorism than a proper term of esteem. They _sir’ed_ him all day through lectures, and he tore them apart once he was at home, grading their essays. Even if they were good, he wrecked them. It gave him pleasure, to see the surly pouts on their faces; it helped him hold onto himself.

           

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

Sometimes, without realizing what he was doing, he would stand again by that window.

It happened most often when he was alone during his planning period. He was only ever selectively good at sitting for long periods of time; when not completely engrossed, he needed to get up and stretch his legs often, needed to pump blood back into his lower extremities. Mostly, he would rise from his desk and take a quick stroll down the hallway; but sometimes he would find himself meandering around the classroom itself, and invariably ended up standing at that window.

It was like a scene from a movie he kept replaying in his head.

Dakin. ( _Stuart,_ he sometimes thought privately.) Stepping towards him, crowding his space, the leather jacket making him look bigger and broader and _older,_ and Irwin feeling small again as he pressed himself back against the window sill. His smell clouding up Irwin’s senses: some trendy cologne, hair gel, aftershave, mixed in with the faint and clinging scent of cigarette smoke. Underneath it all, sweat, from where it was secretly beginning to well up under the young man’s arms, along his hairline. Irwin would never forget it. There was a fluid and numinous electricity that bubbled up under his skin when Dakin was present, and it had then intensified to the point where it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He was tempted. It had been close.

So very close.

And every Dakin after that was just a reminder of how close he had been.

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

It took him a while to realize that someone was missing.

The realization occurred to him rather abruptly, during the middle of a lecture on Henry the VIII (a lesson he had more or less perfected by then). He paused in his speech, and looked around at them all wonderingly. He had nine this term: five who were their own persons, a Timms, one Posner, and (good lord) _two_ Dakins. Most of them were looking at him curiously or writing furiously in their notebooks; one of the Dakins was busy doodling in the margins of the red-marked paper he had received back at the start of class; the Posner (Arquette, actually) was languishing over Doodle-Dakin; the other Dakin, a tall, suave, blonde-haired, green-eyed swimmer whose real name was Hammond, was staring at him with the kind of rapt attention that suggested the Tudors weren’t the only thing on his mind.

Without thinking, he met eyes with Hammond. The boy’s expression changed only a little, less rhapsodizing and more alert now that Irwin was looking at him. Hammond was everything needed to qualify for a Dakin: lean, lassaize-faire, self-assured, brilliant, beautiful, and just a little bit cruel.

Irwin’s gaze shifted to the boy sitting next to Hammond on the table, Waiton. This was Hammond’s best chum, at least as far as could be seen in Irwin’s classroom. He was the typical beta to Hammond’s alpha: smart, but not outshining; self-confident, but only to the extent that he was more or less comfortable with himself; handsome in an ordinary way. But he was not thoughtful to Hammond’s apparently blithe thoughtlessness, and he was not moral to Hammond’s necessarily amoral character.

He was no Scripps; and, now that Irwin thought about it, he didn’t know that he’d ever seen another Scripps. Perhaps there _were_ others that simply had not been given to him: staying with Mrs. Lintott, or not at all interested in trying for history. Regardless, it seemed that Donald Scripps was the only boy whose ghost was not resurrected before him, not even once.

When Irwin’s eyes removed from Waiton and back to Hammond, the latter boy had adopted a quietly gleaming smile. Not predatory, but uncanny. Almost knowing.

He had to clear his throat and move away before continuing with lecture. 

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

All of the Dakins were terrible flirts. Mostly, it was for fun, meant as an attempt to make him uncomfortable more than anything else. He simply lobbed his wry, disenchanted comments back their way, perpetuating the banter but not really taking part in the game or being taken in by it. He became used to their crassness, their boldness, their sly innuendos. It took a lot more to make him blush these days.

He wondered, though, if there was something about him that invited that kind of interaction. Did he _look_ . . . off?

On a day that the flirting was so bad as to lead astray the entire point of the lesson, he contemplated asking Mrs. Lintott—but only briefly. It would be stupid of him to bring it up, especially after Hector. The pretenses of the man’s departure from the school had left the rest of them with absolutely no room for error or even minor misconduct— _not_ that he needed the room. All the same, it was better to leave the subject untouched.

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

Once, he’d brought a female companion to a faculty holiday party. Everyone seemed somewhat surprised. So was Irwin: even he wasn’t quite sure how or where he had picked her up from. She was a familiar face around his side of town, and somehow they had gotten to chatting, gotten to coffee, dinner date or two. He felt like he was horribly awkward about it, but she laughed at him affectionately. They went to bed several times. He had tried his best to please her, but he still wasn’t sure. After a while, it ceased to matter, as they fell out of touch and he no longer saw her around town.

(Years later, he learned that she’d left Sheffield for a job elsewhere; she’d never told him.)

In any case, her brief appearance in his life and his social ring afforded him some protection. Others would ask after his “charming friend” or “his young lass”. He would reply in the vaguest way that she was well or splendid, until he could no longer honestly claim to know.

Somehow ( _somehow_ ), one of the boys found out; and, subsequently, _all_ of the boys found out. Oh, how they had teased him then—or, at least they tried. He firmly steered them back on course, talking about the Sweden’s neutrality policy and its role in the Cold War.

They had all smirked good-naturedly and then uttered melodramatic groans as he assigned them extra reading. Well, all but Hammond.

Irwin hadn’t wanted to notice, but the boy’s expression throughout that entire lecture was tight. His jaw was tensed, and he kept his green eyes fixed firmly on his book.

He only looked up when Irwin had sat back down at his desk and absorbed himself in his notes. Irwin did not see, but he felt it, because it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Hammond gave him no smiles for the next week.

And then it was as if nothing was wrong.

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

Sometimes, he thought about Dakin. As the years went by, it was less and less; but he was only human, and there were still times. It had thus been five years since he had last seen the boy—he would be a man now, and graduated from Oxford. What would he be doing out in the world?

He hadn’t been terribly familiar or close with the Original Oxbridge Eight, so word was never sent directly to him regarding any of them. Totty, however, did get wind of things every once in a while, and she would relate her tidbits to him over lunch shared in the staffroom or the green: Lockwood was shipping out, military; Scripps was attempting to find work as a freelance writer; Dakin was preparing to become a barrister. None of it surprised him.

“He lives in London,” Totty said, smoking her way through a third cigarette. “I’m afraid that suits him too well.”

“It does,” Irwin replied non-committally, taking a drag from one of his own. He doubted Totty noticed (or, if she did, there was never any comment), but everything he said nowadays regarding Dakin was non-committal. 

“I hear from Posner that the boys are planning a reunion here in Sheffield—that is, they will come back to visit their families and afterwards bump into each other at a bar somewhere. He says they might pay me a visit here at the school.”

He really couldn’t help the way his stomach lurched at the thought of Dakin coming _here_ , and he tried to play off his sudden coughing as nothing. Judging by the way Totty glanced sideways at him, she didn’t buy it.

“That—that will be nice,” he managed weakly, once he had control over himself again.

“Yes,” said Totty thoughtfully. “But it will also make me feel unspeakably old—which, I certainly _am_ old, but I don’t know that I fancy such a poignant reminder of it.” Irwin watched her exhale a steady stream of smoke, and he thought about cancer, and the Black Plague, and wondered how in God’s name the human race had made it this far.

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

In the end, it had been fear, and not his moral fiber that had saved him from Dakin.

He had been terrified when Dakin approached him. More than that: petrified. He had been absolutely witless when the boy had made his blunt offer, and then proceeded to back Irwin up against the window that overlooked the football pitch until his shoulder blades were sliding against the cool glass. His heart had nearly ricocheted out of his chest as Dakin put one hand on either side of Irwin’s waist and leaned forward, eyes dark and heavy.

It was fear that had allowed Dakin to get that close; but it was also fear that enabled him to place a hand firmly in the middle of Dakin’s chest, stopping Dakin’s mouth inches from his own.

“I can’t,” he had said, his words skipping the scant air between them to brush over Dakin’s lips. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

That was the part of the incident he allowed himself to dwell on. He did not permit his mind to replay all that came after: Dakin’s adamant protesting, Irwin’s weak rebuttal, and finally Dakin storming out, down the hallway, out the doors of the school, hitching one last ride home with Hector, a false smile plastered upon his handsome face.

Sometimes, when he was alone in the classroom, he touched that pane of glass and remembered.

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

As he found, it was not Auden that did him in. It was Rimbaud.

It took him at least two or three seconds for his brain to jump into action and translate; but when it finally did, he was well-aware that he was being monkeyed with.

 _“—Il respire, humblement tapi parmi la mousse  
_ _Humide encor d'amour qui suit la pente douce—“_

“Boys—”

As Irwin attempted to rebuke Snyder, Hammond, with a devilish smile, jumped in: _“Des fesses blanches jusqu'au bord de son ourlet!”_

Irwin rounded on him, fixing Hammond with what he hoped was a peevish look. He usually managed to pull those off quite well, though whether or not they helped or hindered a situation was always a toss-up.

Hammond barely blushed (barely) but continued that same shit-eating grin. He folded his arms and looked at Irwin challengingly, just as Waiton, not to be dissuaded, continued beside him: —

 _“Des filaments pareils à des larmes de lait  
_ _Ont pleuré—”_

Irwin tore his attention from Hammond, narrowing his eyes at Waiton. “Really, what are you all on abou—”

 _“—sous l'autan cruel qui les repousse,”_ another boy, Georgeson, leapt in.  
_“_ _À travers de petits caillots de marne rousse,  
__Pour s'en aller où la pente les appelait.”_

Surely they weren’t leaning this in their Literature Survey? If he was a master of a more ill-humor, he would certainly be handing out detentions or write-ups, or whatever the bloody disciplinary policy was here—

Out of the corner of his eye, Irwin saw Hammond stand up. He turned to see the boy gesturing with his arms, a foolish and somewhat wicked look upon his face. He looked Irwin dead in the eye, and recited:

 _“Ma bouche s'accoupla souvent à sa ventouse;  
_ _Mon âme, du coït matériel jalousie—”_

He didn’t quite yell at them, but it was a close thing.

“That is _quite enough_ , Dakin—Hammond!” He corrected himself hastily, but the damage was done, and the boys were already laughing.

All of them but Hammond: he had sat back down and was looking at Irwin with the most peculiar expression upon his face.

“Sir, have we stressed you to the point where you can’t remember our names?” asked Snyder, the resident Timms of this year’s class. “Is your internal equilibrium at odds?”

“If it is,” Irwin surged back, snatching up a stack of freshly graded essays and stalking around his desk, “then that is due to the last in a series of atrocities that you lot have deigned to turn in as your homework.” He began passing the red-marked essays back to a much-rewarding chorus of groans.

“I don’t understand,” said Arquette (who had been the only one besides Irwin not amused by the impromptu recitation), turning the pages of his carefully written paper. “Mrs. Lintott would have given me full marks for this.”

“As it may have caught your attention,” Irwin said, passing back another paper. “I am not Mrs. Lintott.” He turned and handed back the last essay, Hammond’s. The boy barely looked at the paper he was given, but instead frowned directly at Irwin, who determinedly ignored him.

“But it’s not fair,” said another boy, also distressed. “We’ve got all the facts.”

“Fair has remarkably little to do with it,” Irwin replied. “Look them over, bring them back to me Friday with comments and thoughts. You are free to go.”

He waited until they had all left the room before exhaling a breath he wasn’t cognizant of withholding.

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

The date of The Reunion was planned, Dorothy said. It was to happen in a month, an expanse of time when they had all managed to clear their schedules enough to nip down to Sheffield for a slightly extended weekend.

“They expect to drop in on me on Friday,” she was saying, hands clasped around her tea. The staffroom was mostly empty—gathering at a local café, from which Totty and Irwin had abstained. “Early afternoon, Posner tells me. I expect you’ll want to see them as well—or at least, they you.”

This time, when his heart began thumping like the floor of the Ritz, he was at least expecting it, and he managed to take it more or less in stride. His hands barely shook around his own cup. “I doubt it,” he said in a self-depreciating tone.

Dorothy raised an eyebrow at him. “No?”

“I’m no Hector.”

She gave him one of her rare, dry smiles that pulled at all the wrinkles of her face and made her look strangely wise. “No,” she conceded, “but they seemed at least slightly taken with you. If nothing else, they will want to come and poke fun at you; after the pause of these past few years, the activity might have regained some of its novelty.”

Irwin nodded, staring into the black surface of his tea. “This is true,” he murmured. “It just might.”

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

“Can I talk to you, sir?”

Caught unawares, Irwin looked up from his notes. It was Hammond, standing in the doorway of the classroom—leaning, really. His blonde hair was a little tousled, as if he had raked his hands through it repeatedly, and his green eyes glinted under fair lashes. The offending paper, gouged with red, was held loosely in his hand.

Irwin peeked at his watch. It was nearly four, well past time for most of the boys to have gone home.

He gave Hammond another look, noting the pack slung over his shoulder and the school jacket held in his other hand. Then, against his better judgment, he nodded.

“Yes. Certainly.”

A grin breaking over the boy’s features, Hammond stepped over the threshold. He was about to close the door behind him when Irwin remarked sharply:—

“Leave it open.”

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

“You called me Dakin during class. Who’s Dakin? Another student?”

They had sat down at one of the long tables that the boys themselves normally occupied, and Irwin was pointing out the weak points in Hammond’s argument. While he had been explaining, he had been able to believe for a whole fifteen minutes that Hammond really came in to talk about his essay.

At the question, Irwin straightened. He had been leaning in closer to the paper, and as such to Hammond. He bristled, remembering himself, and put more space between them. He tried not to purse his lips. 

“Former.”

Hammond could smell his discomfort instantly, and Irwin knew it. The boy also leaned back a little from where he had been leaning in conspiratorially with Irwin. He tilted his head, and Irwin noticed for the first time the small birthmark between his eyelid and blonde eyebrow, like an errant drop of ink.

Hammond grinned, easy, handsome. “Do we all blend together for you, sir? I’m hurt. Am I not memorable in and of myself?”

He kept his head straight but his eyes drifted down to his hand, thumb resting on the corner of the essay, just a few inches away from Hammond’s own. “No. No, you are—”

“I must remind you of him, though. Why?”

He watched his hand curl inward on itself, retracting, retreating. “I thought you came to talk to me about your essay,” he said, not feeling even half as calm as he sounded.

Hammond’s hand splayed fully, taking up the space that Irwin’s had given up. “That’s just it, sir. It’s about the inimitability of certain figures in history. Not just the people themselves, but the times and places they occur.”

He did look back up then, eyes narrowing just a little, not out of anger or anything he could really identify. Maybe it was just an effort to narrow the expanse of his visual range to Hammond’s eyes, so that he would not be tempted to look elsewhere.

Because he _was_ being tempted. He knew that already.

“I know, I read it. Your subject is too broad. You must pick a single event and then use that to exemplify—“

“You’re quite young, sir.”

The single-mindedness of the interruption halted him. “I’ve been told.”

Hammond’s full mouth curled, and his eyes danced wickedly behind his lashes. Deliberately, the boy leaned closer. His breath was warm and smell distantly of sweet mint.

“Beautiful, too. Anyone told you that?”

The proper response would have been to immediately tell Hammond to leave. Or something. Instead, in his shock, Irwin said:

“Not as such, no.”

Irwin nearly jumped as something brushed his hand. Darting a glance at the table, he saw that Hammond was sliding a long finger down the mount of his thumb, skating lightly over his wrist. When he looked back, Hammond’s expression had softened, and his eyes darkened as his pupils dilated. “You are,” he said softly, and Irwin shivered as that single finger caressed feather-light in the center of his palm.

“In your prim, uptight sort of way,” Hammond amended, teasing slightly. “You’re delicate, sir—”

Without thinking, Irwin caught the wrist of the hand that was caressing him and held it tightly.

“Not so delicate.”

Hammond, whose eyes had widened at the sudden gesture, smirked then. He lifted his chin, a challenge.

“Is that so?”

Suddenly realizing what he was doing, Irwin released the hot wrist that his fingers had ensnared. He stood abruptly, causing the chair he had been sitting in to jerk back with a small screech. He looked down, swallowing hard. “Hammond, unless you truly want to talk about your essay, we— this is not a discussion I am willing to have with you—”

Hammond stood then too, rising to his full height. He was slightly taller than Irwin, oddly tall for a swimmer. “Why not?”

He felt his mouth twist into something between a smile and a grimace. “It’s not appropriate.”

“It is fuck. In a few weeks, term will be out. I won’t be your pupil any more. All’s fair.”

Turning his back on the boy (because he didn’t know if he was going to be able to do this otherwise, not again) Irwin strode around the desk and over to the rack where his coat hung. He took it down, faced the window, and began shrugging into it. “Hammond, please leave. I will see you in class.”  

He waited until he was sure he was alone again to close his eyes and rest his hot forehead against the glass.

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

What they had all failed to realize—what he had managed to never teach them—was that history was not just for great figures of the past. History was made all the time. And just because an event would never be splashed across the pages of a book didn’t mean that it didn’t affect people, or change the course of many lives.

A single mishap can issue forth a cascade that causes an empire to fall. A misspoken word or a letter never received can alter much larger events in its wake.

Personal history was still history. Perhaps the most important kind of history of all.

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

 

As it happened, Scripps was the one to tell him.

He was sitting at his house, on the outskirts of Sheffield. It was getting to be late—for a school night, for him. He was reading a contemporary biography of Chamberlain, a subject with which he had morbid fascination. He was sitting in his comfy old armchair with a mug of half-forgotten tea when the phone rang.

He almost didn’t pick up. But the ringing reminded him of his tea and he found that it was cold, so he decided to plod to the kitchen to dump it out. He snagged the phone on the way to the sink.  

Irwin recognized the voice right away. He had not heard that voice in five years, but it was instantly discernable. Perhaps it was because in that five years there had never been any boy comparable to Scripps; in a moment he would find that any reason he had for recognizing his former pupil wouldn’t matter.

_“Sir.”_

And it was as if he had been waiting for this all along. He knew instantly what was going to be said. There was no other reason for Scripps, with whom he’d had no contact in five years, to call him at such a time in the evening. He knew.

He knew.

 _“It’s Stu—”_ a crackle and a pause. _“Sir, it’s Dakin.”_

Irwin’s grip on the phone suddenly became tight and clammy. “Yes?”

_“He’s dead, sir.”_

The lack of surprise in himself as the news was delivered was infuriating. He wanted to be stricken, uncomprehending; he wanted it so badly that he pretended to be so. “He— _what?_ ”

_“Motorcycle accident. He was in the blind-spot of a semi. He didn’t even make it to the hospital.”_

His tea mug hit the bottom of his sink with a _thunk_. He turned, and leaned heavily against the counter, eyes fixing on the single stubborn stain on the face of his fridge. _Pasta_ , his brain supplied. Who knew pasta could leave such a lasting impression.

“Oh.”

He still wasn’t surprised; but now he felt ill.

_“Sir?”_

“Thank you, Scripps.”

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

There was a funeral service held in the week following, there in Sheffield.

Totty had gotten permission from the Headmaster to be gone from school that afternoon in order to attend the two o’clock ceremony. She did not ask Irwin if he was going; she didn’t really speak to him at all about it. But he did see her in the hallways that Friday, looking stately as ever all in black. She nodded at him with an expression that was both much too involved and too absent to be deciphered; he didn’t try, simply returned the solemn gesture.

He had not been invited. This was to be expected. The only person who might know to invite him was Scripps; but if Scripps knew as much as Irwin suspected he did, he would have also known that inviting Irwin to this event would be almost sacrilegious. Other than that single phone call, he had gotten no other word from Scripps or anyone regarding Dakin. This was as it should be.

He managed to get through the morning without much struggle. He almost felt as if it were a normal day. However, the closer the hour came to 2 o’clock, he could feel something in himself beginning to crumble.

During his lunch period, he pulled aside Mrs. Henrys, the General Studies teacher, and asked her if she minded keeping the sixth-formers for an extra hour that afternoon.

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

He was standing by the window again, looking out onto the green. His arms were wrapped tightly around himself, and his fingers splayed across the ridges of his ribcage underneath his shirt. He was hugging himself, staring out the window where it looked as though it was just about to rain.

Or maybe it just looked like that because his vision was beginning to blur and something hot, heavy and wet was beginning to collect at the back of his throat.

Narrowing his eyes, he clenched his jaw. He had asked Mrs. Henrys to take his class so that he wouldn’t have to look at them for an afternoon—this afternoon, when they were putting Dakin into the ground. Not so that he could spend the hour sulking and reminiscing. Yet that was all he had managed to do in the past half-hour. He sat at his desk and thought about Dakin. He graded papers and thought about Dakin. He wandered the room, and thought about Dakin. And now here he was, at the window, at the window where it had all gone wrong.

Or, rather, where it hadn’t _gone_.

It was stupid. Dakin was dead, but Irwin could still smell him, fresh skin, faint cigarette, secret sweat. He could still see him, lush mouth and dark eyes, both warm and callous at the same time. He could still feel the icy stab of his own fear.

 _God, he was pathetic_.

And it happened like this:

He was consumed by his own loathsome wretchedness to the point that he temporarily lost track of his surroundings. He was adrift in the past and forgot where he was in the present, all of the noises and details fading into a dull buzz. It barely registered with him that, outside his scrying window, it had begun to lightly rain. And, because of both of these things, he was unaware of the sound of his classroom door opening and closing, nor of the sound of soft footsteps approaching him from behind.

Without warning, a warm hand slid up onto his shoulder, jerking him swiftly out of reverie, like hot wax splashing into cold water.

His body jerked of its own accord, and he whipped around with such swiftness that he was hit by a sudden wave of vertigo. It was a moment before a familiar blonde-haired, green-eyed person swam into focus.

And once again, he was looking up into that face. So like Dakin but also nothing like. Handsome features, but less pouty, more aquiline. Everything about him was sun, light, Grecian. Day to Dakin’s dark, his pomegranates and Rome. Dakin had been beautiful.

But, so was Hammond.

And he was _here._

Irwin stared up into those eyes, his terror rising like a deadly arctic wave inside him. He didn’t want to see what was there. He didn’t want to see it, the cruelty that only young men are capable of, waiting for him in the pits of those startling bright eyes.

“Sir?”

Irwin lowered his eyes. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, tried:

“I— I. . . .”

He didn’t quite know how it happened; but suddenly, he was surrounded by warmth, by two strong arms wrapping around him, by broad palms pressing firmly against his back, a clean white shirt underneath his chin.

_“Sir.”_

His hands were shaking when he brought them up to reach around and clasp firm shoulders. He was full-body shuddering, quaking, and it felt like his body was having a fit; but Hammond held him even more tightly, and murmured warmly against his cheek:—

“Hey. Hey. . . .”

It felt like an age before he stopped shaking, before his breathing began to even out and the pain constricting his chest eased into a dull ache.

He tried not to cringe as Hammond released him just a little; but the boy did so only enough to look into his eyes. He brought one hand to the side of Irwin’s face, his cheek resting in the smooth palm. A thumb gently swiped under his eye and came away wet.

It was then that Irwin finally looked at him.

And when he did, there was no cruelty in Hammond’s eyes. There was concern and a verdant garden of green, but only that; worry, youthful wonder, and something that bordered upon warmth, but no danger— except for the secret, lying not in the foliage of his iris, but in the line of his jaw:

 _Fear_. 

When Hammond’s bright green eyes flickered down to his mouth, Irwin’s heart didn’t stutter. When warm lips ghosted over his, he did not protest. When his hands wound themselves in the bunched fabric of a uniform shirt and his back was pressed flush against the window pane, he didn’t stop.

When Hammond kissed him, Irwin, for a wonder, did not flee.

He brushed a thumb behind Hammond’s ear, and kissed back.

 

 

**.,oO8Oo,.**

 

 _Here dead lie we because we did not choose_  
_To live and shame the land from which we sprung._  
_Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;  
_ _But young men think it is, and we are young._

-       AE Housman.

**Author's Note:**

> I am shit. Sorry. 
> 
> The poem the boys are quoting is a joint effort by Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, “Sonnet du Trou du Cul”, or something similar. The translations are all very interesting (http://www.practicalalchemy.com/troudecul.htm).


End file.
